How Does My Garden Grow? – May, 2017

It’s been a long time since I posted photos of my garden anywhere online, so I thought, what the heck? Let’s get back to it!

I also need to start posting my YouTube garden update videos that I’ve started doing weekly, the day after I publish them. But for now, look at these photos, and be happy!

I didn’t take a picture of everything in the garden, and the really interesting things will be a month in coming. But what’s here is fun!

Since these peaches are now in their second year out of their pots, they’re growing like crazy…and have consequently produced more fruit than ever! Let’s just hope that the squirrels don’t find them all before we do.

I started a lavender plant from seed last year, which “they” say is very hard to do. I believe it – it was the third try (the charm, right?), and I had to plant several dozen seeds to get this one (they are teeny, tiny seeds).

It’s next to our stone walk in the front yard, a few feet away from the rose bushes. I hope it will spread so that in a few years, lavender will choke out all the weeds in this little area.

Here’s one of the blossoms close-up. Sorry it’s a bit blurry. The flowers just opened about a week ago – fun, because there were no flowers last year.

These carrots are growing in 200-gallon SmartPots. We harvested a few this past week, but they were still much smaller than I expected them to be based on the greens. So I’m going to give them a couple more weeks.

The mostly-empty space at the front of the pot I planted a little over a month ago, just when the grasshoppers where really starting to get going. So most of the baby carrot plants in this space got eaten down before they had a chance to grow. Row covers coming up for the next few plantings…

Our sweet potato patch is (mostly) in the front yard this year. The reason is that I’m building a keyhole garden bed where I usually plant them in the garden. Long story there; I’ll tell you all about it later.

We have a lot more apples than ever! Hopefully, this year a critter won’t get into the orchard and steal them all like it did last year. 🙁 My finger is there to give you an idea of the size of this apple; I think it’s the biggest one.

There are so many goumis on two of the four bushes, that the branches are bending! If I had to do it over again, I wouldn’t have ordered them. The berries are very sour for a long time – even while bright red – and are only sweet and not rotting for a short time before they begin to turn to an icky mush.

It’s also almost impossible to tell when they are finally ripe enough that they won’t pucker your lips when you eat them. At least they’re pretty while they’ve got berries.

These broccoli plants I seeded indoors, and were the largest when I transplanted them. I covered them with row cover for a couple of weeks to protect them from the hungry grasshoppers.

I’ll soon begin to harvest the leaves. The leaves are tougher than the florets, but they are also more nutritious and more prolific than the florets.

These broccoli had grown in the same pots as the larger plants, but had germinated later and so were still pretty small when I transplanted them. I also did not cover them, so I was 90% sure that the grasshoppers would eat them down to nothing. So I was pleasantly surprised when only one of the plants got eaten down – but it is now growing two new tiny leaves.

Considering the pathetic number (five) of sugar snap peas that actually made it to maturity this year, we’ve had a decent harvest. I only use them to add extra pizzazz to salads, so it’s not like I want to be harvesting quarts at a time.

I probably sowed around 100 lettuce seeds in this bed several months ago. Need I say more? (The small plants at the back of the bed are weeds, a red malabar spinach, and a baby zinnia.) Go, Kratky method!

These red malabar spinach plants are growing right next to the lettuce bed.

And these are growing in between two boards that serve as the path next to the broccoli.

And these are growing under the kiwi trellis. They are the only ones – and only maybe five of them – I am going to allow to grow to maturity. The others will be pulled up and used to create my keyhole bed.

Trust me – not even a large family needs dozens of red malabar spinach plants growing! And if you don’t trellis them, boy, do they make a mess!